@shaunaugust Indeed you are quite right that Workflowmax as a product is a picture of neglect. Although Xero wont publicly admit that, they seem to have concluded that the market opportunity for this product is not worth their time and investment.However, there is still some knowledge sharing we can do between ourselves as long term users of this product. In fact right within this forum, I was involved in such a discussion that even resulted is a mutually beneficial service collaboration. If you are interested, I will be happy to connect for an initial discussion. Please reach out to thomaspm@stylusinc.com .

We are long time users of WorkflowMax and if we could find a better solution we would change in a heartbeat. Since Xero took over there is very little support. Reports are nearly useless. It is impossible to get a snapshot of where a project is at because of how costs, purchase orders and invoices are entered. Lack of change orders is a real problem.

It was fine when our business was smaller but now that we growing we are also growing out of WorkflowMax. We really hoped WorkflowMax would become more like Xero, alas it is becoming more like a zero.

We have been assisting practices and small businesses to set up on XPM/WFM. The task list forms the fulcrum around which jobs and job templates are created. A common mistake is the ad hoc nature of calling out jobs and tasks. The job management system set up will determine the quality of reports you will eventually generate. We have tried to share our learning and experience in an eBook

I have been using Workflowmax for years now, and while I agree that the actual day to day use of it is cumbersome, it is the lack of support that is frustrating. I have sent multiple emails to the support team asking for my API and Account Number for a week now, and no reply. I have no idea why, and without a phone number I can't find out if there is an issue with emails getting through to me, if they are ignoring me, or if they are just not answering. I would have thought a week would have been enough time for the support team to get back to me, and I hate having to put something like this up, but there seems to be no other choice.

@Joyce - I've taken a look and can't see that you have a WFM account? If you're able to edit your last comment, with a reference to the emails you received from the team I'll be able to look into this and see what happened, cheers!

I want to use Workflow! I can't seem to get any support. I want to be efficient with our process but there seems to be NO support. it don't think its as easy as its described to be. when will there be a way to actually use this product!!!! I am not sure what you meant about the emails. I have been having ongoing email discussion requesting support.

We run a 20 person Chartered Professional Accounting office out of Canada. We looked far and wide for a Practice Management System that had two-way integration with any accounting software and could not find anything. Upon testing Xero, we fell in love with the interface and felt the same way about Practice Manager / WorkFlowMax. No more bill and deleting time records; job based invoicing is the only way to go and the fact it's cloud based, our IT implementation and training costs have been zero. The tracking feature for location and partner are excellent while some customers have told us that they really appreciate the credit card integration feature for payments. The online support has been nothing short of a 10/10. Keep up the great work Xero!

Server load issues. 3:30pm Wednesday and website fails to load. Clunky getting around and geared towards moving you into a higher tier pricing structure for more 'efficient' workflow features that should be out of the box. Website went down again today. Moving to another software.

@David, sorry if there was any confusion when you signed up! The Android version was in progress for a while but we've recently released it. You can download the App here

Did you end up reaching out to Support about your employees job allocation issue? There could be a few reasons for this, but the team can help to sort.

We're committed to making WFM the best it can be, and we really value feedback so appreciate you jumping in here with your thoughts.

@Devon, we’re always building and expanding our education resources and are currently in the process of working on some new education videos (including ‘deep dives’ in certain product areas) so more self-service to come! Would love to know if there was a particular area you wanted us to focus on more?

With regards to WorkflowMax to Xero and Invoicing - it's limited to what the integration can do. Most times you’ll have to send invoices out of Xero because of the extra features Xero has. You may be able to use Custom Templates in Xero to spruce up the invoice if needed. This page shows what you can do to set up what information syncs from your WFM invoice to Xero invoice.

The features of WFM, and particularly the financial reporting data, is great. However, it's a bear to actually use any of it. The software needs a serious re-design with significant input from actual users, who can help the developers understand how the software is actually implemented. The GUI is too much UI and not enough G. The workflow is neither linear nor intuitive. The documentation on WFM is the worst part about it, and without a community support site like this one for Xero, there's no way to get support other than waiting for a response. While support has been helpful so far, I would much prefer self-service options that are immediate, and where users can help each other (which would presumably also lessen the burden on WFM's support team).

We selected WFM because we wanted to track how profitable each customer was, and WFM allowed us to track our labor costs, and our margins on those costs. Great feature.

However, the implementation has been so difficult I'm searching desperately for any alternative that will provide me the same data. It's an incredible pain to send invoices from WFM because it doesn't have email templates like Xero does. Also, my customers are used to paying online, and WFM does not have the online payments features Xero has. But, when I try to generate invoices in WFM then send them from Xero, since Xero makes sending invoices easy, the "translation" between WFM and Xero makes the invoice appear all wonky in Xero. Sure, the numbers are right and it's fine for accounting purposes, but for customer presentation purposes, the Xero invoice generated from WFM is abominable.

I really like the features, and I would love to help WFM improve its usability and knowledge base to make those WFM features actually usable.

I hate workflow max so much I wish I never ever started using it. It is as unreliable as an old soviet era car. I was told they had an android app when we got it and they don't. They they told me they would have one soon and they still haven't. Right now jobs allocated to a staff member are unable to be found in his timing section. Previously the mobile version crashed constantly and was pretty much unusable. Maybe it works fine if you change all your devices over to apple??? Works fine on a PC but none of my staff are able to carry a PC around in they're back pockets. Slack Slack Slack. Soooo behind the times. Get it together guys. Happy to change feedback if you can deliver what you promised and what I'm paying for.

@Anna it looks like your questions were answered by Support within a few hours on Friday? As much as we'd love to provide immediate support we can have a few emails coming in at the same time that we have to prioritise and answer. We definitely do care about supporting WFM!

@Warren I can see that we've had a bumpy start and you've decided to move on. Sorry about some of the confusion and that we weren't able to call and sort right away. If you do change your mind and want to try us out again do let me know!

As a long-time user of Workflow Max prior to moving to Xero as well I was a very strong advocate of the product and have recommended it to a number of people looking for a Workflow solution. BUT... all I have had recently is issues with the programme and when you try and get hold of support they don't answer.... even when you beg them and advise that it is an urgent matter as a client is expecting an estimate and they system won't let you load templates into it.. or you are trying to invoice and it won't show the correct hourly rates so you have to manually do them.

Seems that they are happy to sell the product.. but not support it. What happened to people actually talking to people so you can talk through the issue rather than going back and forward via support tickets and get no where.

In MYOB there is a report called a "Job Transactions" report. This report would give a lot of details on each of the jobs showing the invoice and bill numbers, dates, amounts and included supplier names as well a net balance.

With the breakdown from MYOB we were able to determine if they were still awaiting bills from a particular supplier and ensure that bills had been allocated to the correct jobs.

Xero and WorkflowMax are very user friendly, easy to use and follow, especially for a new user and business operator like myself. Has taken away a lot of time, paper work and hassel. Tax time is a breeze for my accountant. thanks Guys!

As a Xero user in an engineering consulting company, tracking project time and costs was cumbersome. So we now use WorkflowMax, and no longer require separate time tracking and a host of spreadsheets. It's fully customisable, which also means it can be daunting to start and get set-up. There's plenty of help from support, and since it's widely used there's lots of third party help too, so you can't go wrong. I haven't found a downside to switching yet, and still have lots of features to fully utilise.

We have been assisting practices and small businesses to set up on XPM/WFM. The task list forms the fulcrum around which jobs and job templates are created. A common mistake is the ad hoc nature of calling out jobs and tasks. The job management system set up will determine the quality of reports you will eventually generate. We have tried to share our learning and experience in an eBook - https://cloudservices.leadpages.co/profitability-landing-page/

Workflow Max is just what our business needed to move to the next level as we grow. It has helped us to streamline all of our projects and see our overall budgets much clearer. It has made logging peoples time much easier too. The staff are fabulous, fast and efficient! We were also connected to a set up partner who has been brilliant in helping us tweak and customise Max ('Max' as we are affectionately calling it now) to suit our complicated needs. Thanks you guys!

WorkflowMax is great at keeping everything together in one app. Time tracking, job management and quotes are now all in one place instead of 3 different systems, and integration with Xero means much less messing about copying and pasting customer details when I generate an invoice.

The interface could do with improvements in places but it gets the job done.

I am a boiler service engineer and WorkflowMax works well in my job, the easy to set-up templates save me a lot of time on site and look very professional. Working with Xero and Stripe, I can fill out the job details, convert to an invoice and email the invoice on the spot. It's also easy to see your outstanding and overdue invoices at a glance. This is the best tool in my tool box!

Xero is great but WFM is definitely NOT user friendly. We are a medium sized construction company and WFM causes us more problems than it fixes - I could write a book on the dramas we have had trying to get it to a place where we can actually use it. We were sold on it due to the Financial Reports it creates for the jobs but in reality there is little benefit to this as we cannot customise the reports to suit our needs. We tried making customised reports with the categories we need but the reports have to fit within a "category" and then you can only choose the fields within that category - there is no report where you can just pick and choose whatever field you want from any category, despite all the information being there. When we contract WFM support they were fairly unhelpful and said we couldn't create the report we wanted, even though what we wanted was fairly similar to the Financial Report created within each job - the information is there but unusable.

We also have major issues with the inability to easily make changes to Quotes, Jobs, Purchase Orders and Invoices. Anytime there is a minor change to a quote for example, it has to be copied, edited and re-done, and don't get me started on Invoices. With the type of invoicing we do, it is based on the % of the job complete from the quoted values, less the retentions for that portion, and if there is even a minor change to it, instead of being able to make a change I have to cancel the whole invoice and redo it, which gives a new invoice number despite the original invoice having been supplied to the client. According to WFM there shouldn't be any changes however in the real world there are many changes all the time, to quotes, to purchase orders, and especially to invoices, so cancelling and redoing these has become a common occurrence for us.

I would definitely not recommend this system to anyone due to the constant and continued issues we have had with it, the only reason we are still using it is because we paid thousands of dollars for the full training program and for now we have to make it work. We have researched other systems and will be looking to change before the end of the next financial year.

Love Xero but found WorkflowMax to be overly complicated and made heavy work of what should have been simple tasks. It's easy to lose invoices in the system. Not great for very small businesses like ours.

WorkflowMax is a great companion for Xero. We use it to manage our electrical control systems integration business - from time and expense tracking through to invoicing, WFM really makes things easy for us. We would definitely recommend it to other businesses.

My company has been using Work Flow Max for 6 months and xero for accounting for 3.5 years. Both systems are very user friendly and are a breeze to navigate. The amount of time we have saved from using the software has paid for it's self time and time again.

Tallyfy aims to do the more complex features that people need for workflows, quoting, decision trees, conditional branching, etc. We can integrate to Xero and 400+ other apps via Zapier.

By automating paperwork and processes, we enable a business to run operations consistently and grow faster/scale effectively. Unless you have a process and can actually track it - you can't improve it and it's a big blocker on your ability to hire more people and grow.

Happy to talk to anyone interested via the contact form on Tallyfy's website - https://tallyfy.com

Switched to WorkflowMax to automate the process of taking time billing from timekeeping software to invoice. This has greatly simplified the task saving several hours of admin at month end! Only using this function of WFM but it does it very well and makes it easy to keep tabs on staff billing as well.

Not bad, but it focuses on jobs (like tasks) - though you can create categories for the jobs, which can be better in some cases. I really wish it had the ability to list applications we work with for the clients (regardless if there are active jobs/projects or not). Many of our clients have applications that are part of our "inventory", and I do not want to create jobs just to list them. It would be nice to see "inventory" (or similar) as a tab in WFM to be able to track jobs against them (this concept is in Xero to a degree already).Easy fix 1: Allow associating contact details with "inventory items" from Xero. This way I can at least select a contact and see one or more items associated with them.Easy fix 2: When creating items, allow selecting a "Client" in the "Supplier" list (clients can be suppliers also you know ;) ).Work around 1: Create multiple contacts and enter the contact's position and software item in the "Position" text field as a note.Work around 2: Add a custom field to the contacts.

Hello @david O'Brien and everyone else, just wondering which part of WFM did not suite your needs? We have made an Integration for WFM already and V2.0 is currently in the beta testing stage that syncs Google Calendar with WFM but allows you to edit and schedule Jobs and Task appointments from any calendar mobile app or web app (http://workflowmax.shooshmonkey.com) and I'm very interested in finding out how other businesses use WFM or which part of WFM doesn't suite their needs as there may be an opportunity to create something to fill the void as we have done in the past and are currently improving on. Same goes for anyone else who uses WFM but there are some features missing that could be made with a 3rd party tool. Drop me an email if your interested in chatting about it. kris@shooshmonkey.com. Cheers!

I would like to agree with the previous comment about reporting in WFM. This part of WFM does not deliver as promised.

We are a mid-sized architectural firm and have been using WFM for around 2 years. One of the deciding factors for us to go with WFM over its competitors was its Financial Reporting capabilities and its relationship with Xero (which we currently use and love).

In reality this area of the product is very piecemeal - while all of the information you require might well be in the database - actually retrieving it is quite a challenge. There is nothing that explains what each of the many report types contains or what each field in each report contains. Fields with the same or similar names in different reports give different values - it is often a case of running multiple reports and then cross-checking back in WFM to work out what each field contains - very frustrating and time consuming. Of course you can contact the support desk and I have no criticisms of them they are always helpful and generally relatively prompt - however waiting for a response is often very inconvenient particularly if you are regularly needing to run different reports as I do.

I think that offering a reporting tool without all of the relevant information for users to be able to make proper use of it is really not up to scratch.

I am told this is something the development team might be able to provide at some time...............

Generally we find WFM ok for time tracking, quotes and estimates it is a bit clunky in place. We are a small marketing consultancy based in the UK.

Does anyone have issues with reporting in WFM? We really struggle to easily generate the reports we need to run the business on a monthly basis. Have been in touch with WFM support but the solution is to run multiple reports and combine. Also find it very frustrating that you can't do a full data export from WFM as this would mean we an manipulate the data easily in a third party system. Plus the CSV report exports are not truly CSV and have formatting which means data is hard to pull into a canned report?

Would also like to know if there is a WFM community as I can't be the only one experiencing some of these issues!?

@Ben Robinson @Paul Robertson Agreed. I just tried using WFM to quote and invoice, and the set-up is ludicrously cumbersome.

I've come from using Harvest (lured to WFM by promises of integration with Xero), which had a suite of ready html templates that were easy to tweak to a high standard. Might go and fire that up again; I understand it hooks into Xero.

Edit, nearly a month on:Been using Harvest for nearly a month (began running in parallel with WFM as a test, but then stopped bothering), and am finding it super-easy to get my head around, invest with base information, fire off professional-looking estimates and invoices, and run reports. Yet to run comprehensive reporting, but so far, so easy.

Is it possible to save time from having to constantly re enter a date. When entering a new job that is completed in one day it would be good if you change the date range to be one day if workflow max left that date as the date for everything instead of changing to the current date. You waste time and can make a error if you have to change the date so often. It would also be a double check against timesheets as you would only have the one date available

@Paul Robertson, yes I find the quoting in Workflowmax to be cumbersome. With customizable quotes you can make them look good however I find inputting the quote data (costs) is a bit odd/strange/difficult. Also it is not very flexible, for example you cannot add photos, the work around is to start the quote in WFM then download to Word to finish. The problem is that you cannot upload the quote back to WFM as a quote, it just becomes a file attachment.

Further thoughts....

Pros:- WFM does a lot of things. With Lead Manager you have a very basic CRM which flows nicely into basic job management and then to invoicing.- Stable.- Customer portal/login that allows your customers to see the status of their jobs.- Very good bang for your buck.

Cons:- A bit dated. It is missing modern features such as drag and drop file upload.- The menu structure does not flow very well.- Quoting as per comments above.- Outgoing emails from WFM (for example quotes) are sent from a post.xero.com email address. This provides a bizarre end customer experience; they receive an email with a Xero address from company ABC who is using WFM but not necessarily Xero!!?!? I suspect some lazy technical solution to a security issue. Come on WFM you can do better than that.- The customer portal cannot be integrated into your own website, customers have to go to a WFM page to logon which creates a disjointed user experience. Having a customer logon on our own website would be a killer feature/capability.- For field force organisations WFM scheduling is not very flexible (for example a drag and drop calendar) and WFM mobile is limited. Being able to share photos would be a nice addition to WFM mobile.

Overall, despite the cons listed, WFM does most of what we need. I looked at a host of other apps out there. It would be possible to build a better solution if you subscribed to a CRM and a job management system but then you would have to get the two apps plus Xero all nicely integrated and probably pay more. So overall I give WFM 4 stars up from a previous rating of 3 stars as I get more familiar with it. I think further investment is required to modernise WFM otherwise it will be surpassed by newer job management apps.

Read through all the reviews as I am in the process of getting some sort of job tracking and timesheeting software implemented in our construction company. I have had a go on Workflow and have found the quoting cumbersome and unnecessarily complicated. Xero quotes are great, any other main contractors out there find a good add on for Xero?

We have been using WFM for about 15 months but, whilst it has a lot of features, it has shortcomings that have often prompted me to look for an alternative solution. WFM isn't as mature as Xero. It does link to Xero, but WFM is so obviously different in the way it has been written. For me there are two really big issues:1. The cost of linking in a user. We use a lot of subcontractors that we need to link to WFM on a temporary basis (for event work). Each has to have a paid user subscription even if we just want them to see when they are scheduled and nothing else. In Xero there's no issue with linking in people with low level access, so why not in WFM?2. There is no project level management. We deal with projects that have many jobs, often for different customers within the same project. WFM assumes only one job and one customer per project. WFM support suggested workarounds using custom fields to link jobs, but that approach proved to be hopelessly inadequate. If I could find a project oriented solution that linked to Xero I would drop WFM without hesitation.

I run two businesses using WFM and Xero. When I started using the platform it was possible to select the header colour to differentiate between the two businesses. That option was removed last year and it's a painful loss. It might sound like the simplest of problems but we waste a huge amount of time correcting entries that have been made into the wrong business by mistake because the GUIs look identical. I have approached WFM/Xero support several times about this issue (which would be the simplest of features requiring negligible programming) however my requests are always stonewalled.

This brings me finally to the biggest problem with WFM/Xero, support. I understand that they aren't going to react to every request and that software updates have to be dealt with extremely carefully, but just read the community forum to understand that their way of dealing with most issues is to send out a stock 'not planned at this time' answer. I received an answer to my request for the ability to colour the header bar that was unbelievable. It read something like 'we think there are bigger issues with knowing what business you are working with'. In other words, 'we know it's a problem but we won't implement a really simple fix. We will make it as complicated as possible, string it out for months and then drop it in favour of some more urgent issue'.

We've been using WFM to run our engineering firm for over 3 years now. The more we use it, the more benefit we get from the stored data. We can easily see what's in the work pipeline, manage costs and have very professional documents that impress our clients and safeguard us. It's an awesome product with excellent support.

We were reflecting the other day on how we ran our business without Wfm and Xero? We have improved our systems, are able to follow up on jobs and leads and have more time to focus on our products and services.

We are actually tax professionals but are helping with one of our clients with the project management and budget tracking every week. We didn't use any professional budget tracking software before. Instead we were using pure Excel sheet in tracking the status. It was not very efficient. The WorkflowMax has saved us a lot of time as of the budget tracking and timesheet inputting, and is able to generate nice invoices. We like it so far!

We have been early adopters of the Cloud and use Xero, WorkflowMax, Practice Ignition and Box, amongst other solutions. Integrating our systems continues to reap benefits in terms of the efficiencies and opportunities that this creates. As a multi-industry solution, rather than software built specifically for accountants, we have had to compromise on some things that were not available in WFM that our previous system offered, but on weighing up other features and tailoring templates to suit our specific needs we are very happy with how the system is working for us. Of course, there are enhancements that we would like, and as with all good cloud software these come in time …

Xero Practice Manager/ Workflow max has been a great investment in building my new bookkeeping business. As a tax agent being able to e-file returns from WFM is amazing especially when coupled with the data pulling through from Xero. I am certain that I am not even close to using it to it's full potential yet, but can't wait to explore and use more as my business continues to grow.

We are a small, niche market Engineering firm in Canada. Initially we were looking for a cloud based accounting system in 2014 and found Xero. Through Xero we found WFM and we have not looked back! Our staff use WorkflowMax daily to track their jobs, prioritize their work and log in their time. I would happily recommend Xero/WFM to our business contacts.

Currently Xero and WFM are used independently of each other (roughly 10 months now), though the intention is to link them asap. Both tools are brilliant in their own right. We adopted Xero / WFM due to pain with other systems so it was done in a hurry. I'd strongly recommend investing in a competent Xero / WFM configuration partner and getting it done right from day one. The partner we have is very helpful but we're having to 'reinvent the wheel'. Having said that Xero and WFM have made a massive improvement in helping me run my business and would happily recommend Xero / WFM to anyone.

We use both Xero and WFM in our office as well, and we find that they complement each other. WFM has made lodging Activity Statements and Taxes a lot faster. It is also a great tool for keeping track of jobs.Would recommend to anyone!!

We use both Xero and Work Flow Max in our office. We find them both easy to use and are learning new things every week about how to use the systems to their full advantage. We use the lead manager in Work Flow Max, which makes it easier once the job is "won" We are looking forward to some of the updates we have heard are coming and will continue to use both systems as the business grows as the systems grow with us.

We are a boutique law firm in the UK and use WFM for time management integrated into Xero for invoicing and accounts. It is a system that works very well for us and gives us a far greater level of control than any systems previously used. I would happily recommend it to anyone.

WFM works amazingly to track jobs etc. We use it for our Tax lodgements and also to track other jobs outside of accounting, really works with out business needs.Tax is continually updated which is awesome.Wish there was a dedicated iOS app that could be used on the run, would make it easier to action items without using the full site, which can be a bit hard on a phone or tablet.

WorkflowMax is an innovative, easy and adaptable product that has helped to optimize the resources of our organization. WorkflowMax integrates with Xero allowing us to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of our staff.

It provides critical and useful information in real time to help managers in decision making and to optimize activities, processes and resources.

WorkflowMax is an excellent way to keep on top of contacts, recurring jobs, and filing taxes. We use it extensively, and though there are a few things that could be done better, overall it's a very useful tool.

WorkflowMax is a really useful product that I would highly recommend. We use it extensively in our accounting firm of approximately 50 staff. It allows us to easily track which areas of the business are generating money and which areas are falling behind. I think it's an extremely efficient way of managing work flow. It's also very easy to adapt from other other programs to using WFM.

We are a maintenance business working from Franklin to Rodney and everything in between. Our staff used to get job sheets and complete them by hand. Collecting them was a pain because our staff generally have no reason to come to the office, they go straight to the job. WFM has allowed us to maintain our procedures but has ended shifting piles of paper around Auckland.It is easy to use and quite intuitive - all round we have found it excellent.

I love the simplicity of Xero & WorkflowMax working together. I have been using Xero for 4 years and WorkflowMax for a several months. I like the simplicity of creating a project and the simplicity of recording time (We use Actual for Mac and iOS to record time) The built-in quote generator and flexible reporting functions do what they need to do without being over-the-top. I would recommend using Xero & WFM as a package. Our business type is a digital development agency.

WFM is great for recording time and billing. It is also perfect for what my company is doing as we have so many jobs on the go at once we keep all necessary information on WFM which allows us to keep track.

WFM and Xero are great to work together. Love using both, nice and simple and easy to follow, would definitely recommend for others to use. Starts to get a bit trickier with quite large jobs in WFM when you need to schedule your resources, and those that require tracking in phases but apart from that is really great. Perfect for small businesses

I have used WFM for over five years now, and have always found staff responsive and provide detailed answers to email support questions. WFM is valuable for my business because it streamlines the recording of hours, invoicing, and accounts so easily.

Since taling on Xero and Workflow Max I have found the job so much easier. It takes very little time to keep the bank recs up to date and the main advantage for me is that if I have a query from my Employer I login at home or anywhere else and solve the problem plus I do not have to worry about backing upo the data. We are a small builder erecting Pergolas etc and we can keep a cost of each job with Workflow Max. Regards Trevor

We have found WFM to be great, the emphasis on jobs really helps with workflow and clients work not being overlooked. A much cheaper alternative to other practice managers that we looked at and with the bonus of being cloud based

We use Practice Manager version of WFM but it just doesn't do what we need so are looking for a different solution. You cannot record emails against a customer or contact only against a job. This means you cannot store emails with suppliers at all as they cant have jobs created. Certain reports can only be run using the manager field so difficult to get transparency over what everyone is working on.

Creating adhoc tasks for dealing with one of customer enquiries is cumbersome and the task function lists them by due date so its not possible to filter by contact or importance.

Completely agree to the above comments regarding tradies, WFM just does NOT work.

The WFM support contact given for setting up also was sarcastic, and not realistic with what is achievable. The program will not allow admin staff to plot hours of mobile staff, and the work around for non admin staff was "make up a fake email address for them" and "why is it so important to you" are some of the responses I received. You will pay per person you want to log rather than per user - therefore paying for all those "fake email addresses" as users who are not using the system.

If you you have workers, who are not admin staff and want to accurately back cost, or find a job costing software, WFM is not an efficient program.

We have been developing some utilities to integrate Workflow Max and Google Apps for Work which has required some interaction with the support team. They have been very prompt, courteous and knowledgeable when assisting our dev team in creating these tools.

If anyone out there is interested in integrating Workflow Max with Google Apps for Work we are developing some utilities here - http://workflowmax.shooshmokey.com

Please stop by and find out how to sync yours and my favourite project management tool with the robust Google Apps platform. Cheers and keep up the good work WFM team!

I have had the unfortunate experience of asking some support questions to the Workflowmax helpdesk to assist me in making a decision to use them or another provider. The responses were short, and completely lacked any sort of interest in the query or willingness to assist. If this is the level of support provided by Workflowmax then it has answered my question regarding their support capabilities.

As a consultant travelling to my clients I find Workflowmax invaluable. i can use it for leads to jobs to billing. It sends me reminders and I never forget to follow up. I can use it remotely and from my office. I get to track the jobs and status of leads. I can see what time and cost I soend on my clientrs and therefore what I shoudl be charging to make money. Its seamless integration with XERO really helps make themonitoring of my business performance, and therefore my own performance, a breeze. I wouldnt be without it!

Workflowmax is disappointing and only seems to suit one off jobs rather than multiphase projects. After being led down the garden path, and spending many hours trying to get the thing going, I have found it can't deal with projects with new phases and approvals (or with variations on current phases). Basic functions like logging supplier invoices against a project budget don't seem possible. We are a professional services firm providing project management services, and we love Xero, but workflowmax just doesn't cut it for now. Back to good old excel.

I have been using WorkflowMax for more than 7 (I think!) years now. The software is very easy to use and although I am only using it for timesheets and invoicing it has never let me down and continues to innovate. Moreover the staff are very helpful and whenever I have a problem they respond right away so there is no disruption to my business. Invoicing is probably the least enjoyable part of my work but WorkflowMax makes it easy and less painful! Employees also found the system easy to work around from there is minimal training required. Most people can pick it up just by giving them a password and a quick demo!

Eleven months ago, the only thing that could be vaguely understood was total sales to a client. However, in order to understand the cost base and truly drive profit, and link it back to our goals, we needed to be able to break down jobs, and their cost, as well as give the guys one site and the guys in the office something that could allow them to be far more efficient and far more effective at what they needed to do.

We looked at WorkflowMax, GeoOp and Connect2Field. WorkflowMax is just a standout, across these in terms of its reporting, its connection with Xero, and its detail.

It gives us a real competitive advantage. Tradesmen are notoriously known for turning up late to jobs. WorkflowMax helps us a heck of a lot to not do that. It’s a simple thing, but if you can be the one guy in the industry that just shows up on time and gets the job done, it gives us a real competitive advantage. That’s the beauty of it.

To be able to use the data that comes out to drive top-line revenue and bottom-line profit, has been phenomenal.

We switched from Simpro to WFM mostly due to our use of Xero and the cost/speed issues with Simpro, wish we didn't.WFM may be good for the professional sector but for Builders/Trade it just doesn't work.We are unable to allocate multiple suppliers to an item so the item must be created 2 -3 times with each supplier.We can not import contacts each has to be entered manually.No tax adjustment, or variations to jobs. The list goes on And the support just does not exist every request we send has just not been responded to.More interested in making it look great(and that is a slow process) than functionality.

I am the Director of Melbourne-based commercial fit-out and property maintenance company, Symmetry Commercial. After migrating from MYOB to Xero, we were looking for a work scheduling and quotation software, and that’s when we discovered WorkflowMax. For us, the beauty of WorkflowMax has been creating a really tight process around purchasing and sending online purchase orders. Typically, paperwork goes missing, emails go missing. But now it’s so much easier; we can just log on and see all the information in one place. If we need to re-submit a quote or a purchase order, it’s all there.

The biggest thing for us is the quotation side of things. What’s terrific is that this information then feeds directly through to Xero to create an invoice, which cuts down on invoicing time.

Functionality was a focus for us; we didn’t want something that was going to be too difficult to use. But WorkflowMax is very user-friendly; we’ve had new people start here and it’s been really easy for them to pick up.

WorkflowMax has been great for us in the sense that it has got so much scope. We were looking for something that could grow with us; as the company grows we can actually expand our use of the system. WorkflowMax is only going to get better for service-based industries because they are specialist to that particular type of software. When our business goes to that next level, and we have got more people out there doing project estimating, then I know there are those functionalities within WorkflowMax, and it’s something that we’re excited to explore.

This is rubbish for builders. We have 12 full time staff plus lots of contractors and suppliers. We bought and trained to use WFM on the strength of our accountant singing its praises. He even showed me the brochure which clearly states for builders.WFm has no idea how builders run their business's and you need to remove the reference to same on your web site. Architects and sub contractors operate in the building industry, but they are not builders as referenced on your web site.

Specifically: the estimating is extremely poor and is not one bit logical for a building contractor. No idea of how to account for 'allowances or variations'. No understanding of progress claims or what 'cost plus' contracts are. You might as well say that WFM works for Astronauts as well if you are going to print brochures with random vocations on it. It is about the same level of accuracy, ie, none.

We love WFM & Xero. Since Xero owns WFM, Is there a Bundle Package you can get to save if you opt to buy and sync both?

Thanks

Regards

Amit

Amit Sewani

We have been very disappointed in WFM. For starters the "contacts data" does NOT integrate at all with Xero. To make matters worse the first upgrade was to make WFM look and feel more like Xero instead of making the two programs head toward eliminating the need for double entry of all contact data. It would also seem that the majority of business using the system are professionals who essentially use WFM to manage themselves and track and bill hours. I am sure the system is fantastic for this type of use, but if you expect to be able to manage employee's as we were lead to believe it will not. Both Xero and WFM staff think it will, but you will be disappointed if you try as we were. We will eventually leave WFM and probably Xero as it turned out to be a poor fit and we also do not agree with their philosophy and the direction they are heading. Xero who owns WFM, literally means "beautiful" in beauty over function in their tagline "beautiful accounting". Ironically, these were the very reasons we signed up with Xero and WFM, but the information and wonderful reviews were from business categories dissimilar to ours. Frankly it is our own fault for not noticing this. I would just hate to see someone else make the same mistake we did. Get referrals to your business category prior to signing up. While I do not believe we were lied to by Xero or WFM, I do think they were ignorant in the true sense of the word. Said another way, they did NOT sell us knowing it would not do what we wanted. They sincerely wanted to help us, it just did not work out.

I love Xero and WFM is the logical step for my practice, however it is the most cumbersome, dog difficult program I have ever used in my life to set up. I have looked and searched for a decent recommendation of the best way to set it up and can only find specific instructions that dont consider the bigger picture. The import function is poor compared to Xero, I cant find the time data opening balances that I imported plus it shows as disbursements on reports, etc etc etc. This could be the first time in my life that I need to get a reseller to help me set new software up. The complexity is even worse than AccPac.

The only reason I am giving it two stars is that it must have real power given the above comments.

Off to go and create my third implementation to see if I can get it right now. Running out of email addresses!

At Jones Business Solutions we used WFM to move off MYOB Time Billing - conservative estimate that saved around 10-12 hours each month with invoicing. Even better now to have the Tax Practice - previously used an excel template for financials - the combination with WFM, Xero and Spotlight Workpapers is sensational for a small Tax Agency like us. WFM Support is prompt and helpful and we love WFM so much we now regularly implement and support other businesses wanting to get the max out of job costing and reporting. Have tested other similar systems and yet to see something that stands out for a comparable price.

I'm quite liking having a system, however I'm struggling a little to get it set up & working effectively. Little things like calculations rounding when I've specified in preferences for them not to, unable to edit various invoice fields when the integration between Xero & WFM is not working as it's supposed to & I now have eg differing invoice numbers floating around. These teething issues would be far less frustrating if the online support was better - but it's very generic, not overly helpful, and there doesn't seem to be any forum like Xero has where people can discuss how they've worked around the practical issues.

We love working with Workflow Max. Our business model is based on charging client an hourly rate for work completed. Workflow Max makes it so much easier for us to accurately track what we have done (in the level of detail our clients' require) and it is so easy to turn these records into invoices. We have saved a lot of time and money. I would highly recommend Workflow Max.

My name is Ruth Cole, and I’m the office manager for environmental consultancy Greengage. I’ve been using WorkflowMax for a while now and love it. It was really easy to get started, and there’s no paperwork. One of the great things about Workflowmax is the fact that it’s paperless. This is important to us because as an environmental agency we should practice what we preach.

Now, all our invoices are sent out online, so we can guarantee our clients receive those invoices. Our whole office is streamlined, and admin time has been drastically cut, thanks to WorkflowMax.

I sure that I am only using a fraction of the functionality of Workflow Max at the moment,but by tracking my hours and breaking the tasks down into narrowly focused units, it hasbeen a real eye opener as to just how much time I am spending on various tasks. I would recommend Workflow Max to anyone that needs to track their billable time. I also likethe sync with Xero.

I find it a little clumsy compared to the solution we had before. Integration seems good, except we have to edit every invoice in Xero to make sure the correct cost centre is updated.The tech support people seem to be completely immune to suggestions of improvements though and every request is met with a suggestion to use third party tools or change the way we do things.Personally I find them inflexible and demeaning. If it was up to me I would not use the product.

I second Natasha's request/question. An online community for WFM users is a must have. Would likely be a great source of productivity improvements for all of us struggling to use WFM and Xero in combination, or using WFM standalone.

Gavin, has the account structure underlying WFM's WIP module been exposed/delineated. I'm struggling with how to implement WIP in combination with Xero. Can you point to any resources? I've exhausted those on WFM Support, but need more support/guidance. Email just doesn't seem very useful for my needs. Documentation, use cases, examples, etc. would be far more helpful, as it's more about the technicals of cost accounting, not software, that I need assistance.

Hi Karen - We take great pride in our awesome support team and the amazing response times of the team, which are some of the best on the planet (judging by Zendesk's statistics :)). In fact our customer support is often commented on as being second to none, and is one of the key reasons WorkflowMax is so well loved by our many thousands of subscribers, so your comment does come as a surprise.

On further investigation it seems that we have only received a single ticket request from you and this was responded to within 6 business hours, which is outside of our target of 80% of tickets responded to within 4 business hours although well within the 100% of tickets closed within 24 hours target. A peak in ticket load yesterday afternoon was to contribute to the slight delay in your response.

I do hope you experience the usual standard of performance from the team in your future interactions.

I love the functionality of Workflow Max is great but support is HORRENDOUS!!!! 2 emails for support, an invite to support and after 24 hours there was no response at all! Of course, there isn't a phone support so there is no way of contacting them! I am a very frustrated customer.

We are trying to figure out how to add due dates and compliance dates to WFM for USA Tax purposes. We can create the templates but the dates are able to auto populate based on the type of taxes we are doing. Any luck out there?

I gave WFM 4 stars because the Xerocon Practice Manager is a 10* product.

WFM seems very good, in that it is easy to add steps and review job status. However, I found that the initial Accounting templates had very little real-world detail. This surprised me, as I believe many WFM users are professional accountants.

I want to trade accounting, tax and related templates with anyone, ASAP. I am U.S sole CPA, with many (to me) clients and 50 years of heavy computer experience. I have been heavily outsourcing since 1999 and cloud accounting since 2005. Therefore, I badly need WFM control.<b><b>

No one here can now work without first creating or adapting a template that covers ALL steps they need. Each new job starts with the latest applicable template and my looking hard for steps to add. However, I still do not trust myself or anyone to include everything needed.<b><b>

If you have particularly detailed templates, I will pay for them. I also will give you my 0CPAs program. It automatically Saves All assigned entries, for all accounts and clients, with a few clicks. It also exports rules to Excel (soon to MySQL), for any or all clients, so you automate finding errors and copying rule supersets to any or all clients. Much more is coming, so please tell me where you need Xero automation.

Finally, I will pay any UK (October 4), Australia or New Zealand firm that makes me a delegate or consultant for the Practice Manager or other beta.<br><BR>BY THE WAY, i CAN NO LONGER REPLY TO COMMENTS HERE.

Our practice moved to Xero and WorkflowMax from other products 3 months ago. The transition was simple and straightforward. We have found both applications to be extremely user-friendly, comprehensive in terms of features and providing relevant management and reporting information that is easily accessed. The Report Builder is also extremely easy to use. Working out of the cloud has provided far greater flexibility then we ever had previously and at a far lower cost. The support provided has been first class and appears to be available 24/7, staffed by highly competent, polite and very responsive personnel. We implemented both WorkflowMax and Xero without external support but will now seek assistance to extend the benefits we are already receiving from both systems.I wonder how other software solutions will compete and have recommended both WorkflowMax and Xero to other prospective users.Thank you.

However, my employer has been to a conference few weeks before. The presenter in the conference said that when sending the quote to clients through email, the clients are able to accept the quote directly in the email as there is a button letting the clients to click on "accept".

However, this is not happening in our WFM. We can only send out the email with the attachment of the quote and the message we typed in. The clients can only reply us through email, but not just clicking on a button "accept".

Will it be possible for us to do the same as the presenter? How can we create the button?

Love WFM, we tried to use IRIS practice management, but something didn't feel right. We tested WFM and were a little apprehensive to start with, but once we got into the roll of how everything operates we were hooked.

With the integration with Xero, its a win/win and now that Xero own them I am sure things are only going to get better,

3 years ago we made the switch to Workflow Max for our business and haven't looked back. Now we are implementing for our clients as well! Workflow Max has completed changed the way we approach running Growthwise. We have access to everything we want to know about clients, all the jobs we have to complete for the year and now ability to lodge BAS directly within WFM!!!!! We can run reports on anything we want to see for the business all from the click of a couple of buttons. A must for any progressive accounting business and so awesome for anyone else wanting detailed workflow control.

We use WorkflowMax daily and recommend it to our clients as a solution for time and job tracking. WFM enables us to prioritise jobs, to have open communication across the firm, and to manage leads efficiently. Cheers guys!

It's time to include some of the additional reporting features available in Australia and NZ to the global version of WFM, esp in Canada and the US. For starters in Canada, GST/HST report filing that connects directly with online government reporting as well as corporate business income tax reporting capabilities. Would make a nice 2013 Christmas present for us, Canucks.

Inland Revenue, Xero, lead management and practice management integration is the key for running an efficient practice and that is what WFM delivers. WorkflowMax/Practice Manager is a must have tool for the modern practice!

As the leading WorkflowMax/Practice Manager in Australia, we have helped Accounting Firms and their clients make the transformative move to WorkflowMax. Not only do they get powerful reporting, cool Document Storage and searching with Box.com and Dropbox, smooth as silk integration with Xero and detailed information at their fingertips, WorkflowMax allows your business to focus on the key elements for success in your Practice - job completion, invoices sent and cash collected.

You simply are NOT a Firm of the Future if you aren't using WorkflowMax/Practice Manager

WFM is the logically next step for any accounting firm or bookkeeping business to manage and get the business really focused back around throughput and the jobs that are priority to grow the bottom line of the business and those jobs that are not worth chasing. As an accounting firm in Australia using Xero and WFM together we have found it amazing. However the whole team has to embrace the change. If you want to chat more just email me at robertk@nbc.com.au.

We also help clients bed down WFM, Xero and a whole heap of other Add-Ons in their businesses to make a huge difference.

As a Tax Agent in NZ, I LOVE WFM. I'm green with envy that Ozzie has Govt reports, but our equivalent WFM is just a breeze, working with Xero accountants they don't mind that I switch 'linked' during the year for GST and year end back again